The Unseen (4 page)

Aubrey appeared from out of the bathroom, wearing clothes that made her look like a girl playing dress-up in her mom’s clothing. Kari laughed as Aubrey looked down to survey how she looked.

“That bad?”

“Don’t worry—we’ll find a recycler and printer soon and get you some clothes that fit.”

“The sooner the better.”

“Agreed,” Kari said. “You ready to head out?”

“Yeah, but . . .” Aubrey shied away from finishing what she was going to say. She didn’t need to; Kari already knew what Aubrey was thinking. Kari felt her heart sink a little, as much as she’d looked forward to living on her own during school, it wasn’t everything she had dreamed it would be.

“You want to stay with the Pratts.” Kari said what Aubrey didn’t want to.

“Don’t hate me.”

“I don’t. I get it; there will be more of a social life down here. West Dakota can be a little on the boring side of things.”

Aubrey nodded her head in agreement. “You know, you could move down here a little closer to me.”

“Funny how that would also move me closer to David,” Kari said.

“You’re right, that is funny.” Aubrey shrugged and walked into the room to help Kari with her bags. Kari shook her head and opened the door into the hotel’s hallway. Aubrey brushed by her and continued the conversation. “I mean, after the dance, it doesn’t seem like such a horrible idea to live closer to your boyfriend, does it?”

Aubrey had been insistent last night that she wouldn’t go to sleep until she had heard every detail. Even the details that Kari had a hard time describing, such as how her first kiss had felt.

“I don’t know if I’d call him my boyfriend . . .”

“But living closer would be nice.”

“If I move closer, will you live with me?” Kari asked.

“Yes! Kari, of course!” Aubrey dropped the bag she had been carrying and hugged Kari tightly.

“Not too close, but within a quick auto-auto ride,” Kari clarified. “I can’t promise you’ll go to the same school or anything, but we’ll be around people.”

“I’m so excited, and Mom and Dad will be happy that I’m staying with family,” Aubrey said. Her excitement was wearing off on Kari, and she couldn’t help but be excited as well.

“I’ll see if I can set up a call for you and your parents on my way home tonight, but it might take me a few days to get a secure line with the current state of things.”

“No worries. Whenever you can set it up will be great. It’s not like they’re worried about me anyway. They still think I’m part of some super-secret government school for the gifted.”

“Really?” An auto-auto pulled up and opened its doors. Luckily there was no one else inside, so Kari and Aubrey climbed aboard, and they had enough room to comfortably fit Kari’s bags.

“Yeah, that Marshal guy made a convincing pitch to me and my family about how I could help with some special projects that they needed a ‘youthful perspective’ on. It was only after I got to his prison that I figured out what was really going on. He forced me to write cheerful messages to them every week about how much I loved life and stuff. They told me that if I didn’t play along, he’d tell my parents that I had committed treason.” Kari sent the auto-auto orders to take them to David’s house in order to drop Aubrey off before she started her long ride home.

“Ugh, Henderson is the worst.”

“He is. The worst. I’m just glad to be done with him.”

“Yeah, I hope.”

“You hope? I thought you said last night that he couldn’t get to us here.”

“I did,” Kari admitted. She quickly checked the normal locations on the Net where the hacker community met and found them empty.
Something’s not right.
“And I hope I’m not wrong.”

How do I have this much stuff already?
Kari had only lived in her house for half a year, but it was already a chore to pack everything up.
Especially when she was trying to do it under the current circumstances.

Setting up a call between Aubrey and her parents hadn’t taken as much time as she thought it might, which had allowed Kari plenty of time to look into current events on the drive home. Something had happened to send all the hackers into hiding, but Kari couldn’t figure out what it was. There were rumors of more high-level assassinations on the coasts, but Kari couldn’t find anything that would have this dramatic of an effect.
Although, now that I think about it, activity on the hacker sites has been declining for months.

Kari jumped as something brushed her foot. She made it onto the top of her bed, knocking several boxes out of the way, before she looked back to see that it was Lars. Her dog was startled by Kari’s unexpected reaction and looked around suspiciously for the source of the problem.

“You scared me, Lars!” Kari pushed the boxes on her bed farther out of the way before reaching down to pick up her small Shih Tzu and lift him onto the bed. Lars sniffed around for a minute before deciding to settle down on top of Kari’s stomach.

“Are you tired, Lars?” Kari checked the time and saw that it was late enough that it would be early soon. She had made it back home early in the evening and had been working diligently ever since.
She had always been a bit paranoid, and tonight was no exception.
I’m being ridiculous; I can finish packing tomorrow and head out within the next couple of days. If Henderson knew where I was and was capable of extracting me, he would have done it a long time ago. A few more days won’t make a difference. No need to get all jumpy.

It had been a long day and an even longer weekend. For the first time, Kari started to feel the effects of the eventful few days.
She reached out and petted Lars while her mind continued to battle between wanting to calm down and wanting to think of possible conspiracy theories. Kari overrode her vision and loaded herself into a simulation. She configured it to be a mellow setting, so instead of having to solve a puzzle, she would explore an exotic landscape. She used these toned-down simulations occasionally to help her unwind and take her mind off of other things.

She was on a white sandy beach somewhere with magnificently clear water. The tropical sun melted away into a well-lit starry night as Kari changed the time from midday to a more relaxing evening. She walked down the seashore with her eyes closed, both in the simulation and real life, listening to the sound of the digital ocean.
Each step she took felt heavier and heavier until her mind couldn’t walk any further.

Lars’s barking jerked Kari from her dreamless sleep. A surge of panic raced through her as she looked up to see what Lars was concerned about. There was nothing there.

“Lars! Quiet!” Kari tried to hush her dog, but he kept barking. She sat up slowly, giving Lars enough time to jump off her bed and onto the floor while still barking. When he got going, he wouldn’t stop unless he was satisfied.
Not sure this counts as being my best friend, Lars.
“What is it, puppy?”

Lars continued barking frantically at the door of the bedroom until Kari let him out. All the lights were on in the rest of the house, as Kari hadn’t been bothered to turn them off before drifting off to sleep.
Lars raced across the room to one of Kari’s 3D printers and growled at it. She only had a couple of printers now, and they were all low on resources. The war had made quality printers scarce, and materials were nearly impossible to purchase, even if you were willing to pay the ridiculous prices.

“It’s just a printer, Lars, the same printer that’s been here the entire time you’ve been alive. Come on—it’s too late for this.” Kari whistled to call Lars back to the room, but he stubbornly growled at the printer. Kari rubbed her eyes and whistled again.
The printer’s on
. A chill ran through her body.
I haven’t printed anything since before I left.

Kari paced barefoot across the cool floor to the printer. The glass protective shield that prevented the object from being removed until it was finished lowered silently, signaling that whatever had been printing just finished. Kari reached in and grabbed a small sheet of graphium. It was the thickness of a piece of paper, and it was still a little warm from being printed. The sheet had letter holes in it that formed a message. Kari spun it around until it was face up and in the right direction.

“General Emil is dead. They are here for you. —The Unseen”

The message slipped through Kari’s fingers and fell to the floor. Lars backed away, scared, but kept growling. Kari overrode her vision and pulled up the camera feed from a dozen or so drones waiting in trees and bushes around her house.
General Emil was the man who let me go after I was captured by the Middle States last year. If he’s dead, then whoever is in charge now might not agree with his decision to let me go. Maybe I should have been more paranoid . . .

Clouds blocked most of the faint moonlight, which didn’t make it any easier for Kari to see if there was anything out there. Her drones scanned the surrounding area for any movement while remaining in place.
Kari couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but something didn’t feel right.

She ordered one of her drones to take off and fly around the house. A single flying drone would draw attention, but it wasn’t uncommon for people to monitor their homes from the outside with drones, as they were more effective than stationary security cameras.
Lars turned his attention to the nearest window. The printer turned on again and started printing another message. The drone flew from a nearby tree and approached the house before blinking offline. Kari’s breath caught in her throat.

The peaceful yard outside Kari’s house transformed into a nightmare in an instant. Dozens of shadowy figures rose from the ground where they had been blending in, brandishing weapons pointed at her home.
Heavy thuds on the roof drew her attention for a split second before a gas canister bounced off of the nearest reinforced window. Kari wanted to scream, but instead she closed her eyes and went to work.
Why won’t they just leave me alone?

Kari marked everything that moved as a hostile target and commanded her drones from outside to attack them. All of the drones outside were small, but each had a powerful electric stinger at its disposal. They worked best in a giant flock, but the limited numbers she had outside would have to be enough to distract her assailants until reinforcements could arrive. The front door of her house shattered to pieces under the force of a battering ram, sending chunks of wood scattering across the entryway.

Soldiers in full electronic armor forced their way through the broken entrance, lifting their massive energy guns and pointing them at Kari. The coat closet door burst open, and a jumble of mechanical legs came sprawling out, firing restraining bands at Kari’s uninvited guests. The electric bands wrapped around the soldiers and constricted, delivering enough of an electric shock to drop the intruders to the floor.
I’m done inventing things that hurt people, and I’m done hurting others with my technology, but I’ll never be done defending myself.

Kari glanced down at the printer to see what had just finished printing, hoping that whatever it was would be worth the valuable time it took to look at it. A paper-thin black graphium message lay on the printer’s surface.

“Head East. —The Unseen”

Kari grabbed Lars from where he was whining around her feet and ran for the back door. She activated the rest of the drones she had in her house and ordered them to secure a path at the rear of her entrance by any means possible. She reached the back door and threw it open, allowing a small cloud of drones to fly out in front of her, their stingers crackling with electric power.

Some glass shattered somewhere in the house behind her, but Kari stepped out of her home and into the dark night. Drones darted around, attacking soldiers in front of her and to her sides, their stingers lighting up the backyard like a miniature fireworks display.

The delivery drones that had flown Aubrey from the coast to David’s house lowered from the sky and wrapped their arms around her body just as Kari noticed a steep drop in the number drones she had under her command.
Time to get out of here!

Kari ordered the delivery drones to fly her west at full speed.
I don’t know who the Unseen thinks she is, but no one hacks my printers and tells me what to do
. A bright burst of blue light drew Kari’s attention just as the delivery drones lifted her a few feet off of the ground.
Half of the drones that had been under Kari’s command a moment ago were gone.
Whatever that was, it just wiped out those drones with a single flash of light!

The delivery drones tugged her higher into the sky, and Kari looked down to see a pair of soldiers looking up at her from a few feet below. They jumped to grab onto her feet, but were only able to brush the bottom of her toes with their armored fingertips.
Come on! Faster!

A low, reverberating popping noise shook Kari’s body as blue light passed over her.
The hair on her arms and head tingled, and the delivery drones died in midair. Kari squeezed Lars tight in her arms as she realized she was going to crash to the ground before she even started sinking.

The fall to the ground was over almost before it started. Kari landed in the metal-covered arms of one of her attackers. Despite only falling a few feet, Kari’s neck snapped back, and her body stung where the impact had occurred.
The arms of the delivery drones scraped her skin, as they were still wrapped tightly around her.

Kari tried to reach out for any of her drones that were still functioning to come and save her, but her mind chip was offline
.
So she tried to smile instead, hoping the soldier would take pity on her. The soldier dropped Kari to the ground and pulled the arms of the delivery drones apart to free her. Before he could snap an electric restraining band around her, one of Kari’s drones flew in and shocked him in the side of the neck.

The soldier crumpled to the ground, and Kari scrambled to her feet, still clutching to Lars. Her body stung, and she could feel herself bleeding in a few places, but she didn’t have time to worry about that now.